


I Will Wait As Long As Is Needed

by Fiction_Rules_Reality



Series: Waiting [1]
Category: The Iliad - Homer, The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: M/M, canon character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-04-30 22:48:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5182532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fiction_Rules_Reality/pseuds/Fiction_Rules_Reality
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a time where meeting your soulmate brings color into your life, one young man reflects on the life he had lived with his other half while he waits for them to be reunited in the Underworld.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Will Wait As Long As Is Needed

“Gods live forever, they are selfish, they have no need or want for soulmates. The people who live under them are the opposite.” I start the story the same way every time and today is no different. “They live for only a short time, many of them are good people and know that soulmates are a precious thing. To find your soulmate is to find the key to all happiness, that is not to say that you cannot be happy without a soulmate, a soulmate simply helps guide you.   
“Perhaps it is the fact that the Gods do not have soulmates that keeps them from understanding how important they are. After all Hera forced Herakles to kill his soulmate and their children and the grief nearly consumed him. The only God who even comes close to understanding is Aphrodite, the Goddess of love, who eventually gave him a second chance and a second soulmate.   
“Yet even knowing that the Gods cared little for the affairs of humans, especially concerning soulmates it still hurt Achilles to know that his own mother could not accept his soulmate, his other half. Patroclus. Achilles was never able to believe their luck to have been allowed to meet so young. To have color introduced while they were still kids.   
“They were not without their share of problems. When Patroclus first kissed Achilles, Achilles ran. He was afraid of how his mother would react. He knew she hated his love and was unwilling to risk Patroclus; not even for the amazing, beautiful, perfect feeling of Patroclus’s chapped lips against his own. He pretended to his mother that the union between Patroclus and himself must be purely platonic. However he still dreamed of their lips meeting, of Patroclus’ brown eyes, of running his hands through Pat’s curled brown hair, and interacting without fear of being seen by anyone who believes that two men cannot be romantic partners.   
“That is why Mount Pelion became their safe haven, a place where they could be themselves and love each other without fear. It was on that mountain that they learned everything. It is where Achilles realized that he is one of the best warrior's, it is where Patroclus learned to be a great healer. But all good things come to end. They had to leave and join the war against Troy.  
“Achilles was called as a fighter because of his ability. Patroclus was forced because of a deal he made when he was too young to understand what he was promising. Together they gathered Achilles’ army and made their way to the battle.  
“For many years they lived fighting daily but spending the evenings and nights wrapped in each other’s arms. However Achilles was selfish, he was greedy and, when he was insulted by Agamemnon, he refused to fight. Patroclus, who knew Achilles main goal in life was to be remembered and live forever in glory took it upon himself to fight in Achilles place. He wanted to give his love the honor Achilles had always wanted. Achilles warned him of the danger and begged him to return safe, to not engage in battle unless necessary but was never capable of saying no to his love and helped even helped dress him in Achilles own armor. Patroclus did not return alive.  
“Achilles knew the moment it happened. He was pacing, keeping his eyes on the field wanting to see the exact moment his heart returned to him. Then suddenly the green and brown of the flat fields spreading in the distance as far as Achilles could see disappeared, replaced by black and white in a way Achilles had not known since he was a child.   
“He screamed and fell onto to the ground crying and begging. He reached for his sword unwilling to live without his heart but his hand gripped nothing but air, his sword was with Patroclus. Achilles covered himself in dirt and refused to move. He knew that without Patroclus there was no life for him.” Even after all these years, even after all the times I told the story this part still gets to me. I sigh and blink away my tears keeping my eyes on the ground to not allow the audience see me cry.  
“He did not move for hours, his mother Thetis who had heard his scream from her home at the bottom of the ocean had tried to convince him that Patroclus’s death was nothing. That Achilles could move on and will continue to fight and bring about his own honor in the morning. The only sound he made were the loud sobs and desperate pleas for it have been some mistake.   
“It was Iris telling him that the Trojans, that Hector, were taking Patroclus body that convinced him to move. If he could not have Patroclus back with him on Earth, alive and in his arms then he must give him a proper funeral for the lover, the heart, of Aristos Achaion and have Patroclus wait for him in Hades’ kingdom until they could be together once more.   
“He fought desperately without remorse, without a care for himself, without armor. He could no longer see the red of the blood that flows out of his victims but it does not matter because he does not look. His eyes searched for Patroclus hair, and he attempted to not dwell on the thought of how strange it is to see the people he knows with eyes that no longer see color.  
“He found Patroclus easily and did not look at anyone around him as he puts the sword he is borrowing into the sheath and picks up his lover’s body. He left the body in the tent and laid next to it all night. The pattern continued. He fought every morning and spent every night wrapped around Patroclus’s body. He did not eat, he did not sleep. He cared for nothing but that Patroclus was dead that he needs get revenge.  
“He killed Hector and dragged his body around behind his chariot every evening. He returned the body when he met Hector’s father, seeing the resemblance in the man’s despair for his son’s death to his own despair over Patroclus’s. It is that meeting that convinces him to burn Patroclus’s body. He put the ashes in a jar and kept it in his tent and told Odysseus that he wants his own ashes be placed in there as well, to have them honored together, so that they may never be separated again.”  
I stop there once again and glance at the faces surrounding me. The eager eyes desperate to hear the story. Many stare up at me with wide eyes and open mouths enraptured in the tale but do not seem to see the truth in it. Some seem more interested in what little of the battle I have told. Others do not seem interested at all. The best, to me, have tears in their eyes and arms wrapped around another, soulmates who have faced what I have.  
“I smiled when I died. I had tried to die in battle many times. I did not wear armor, I tried to keep myself still, I wanted to be nothing but a target but the Godly blood in my veins betrayed me and had me move when I did not want to. Yet finally I heard an arrow and turned towards it as it pierced my heart.  
“I was honored as I had once wished but the price was Patroclus. The son I did not want, from a marriage my mother forced me into came to fight and ordered that I be honored alone. Patroclus is doomed to live forever trapped there with our ashes in a tomb that honors only me but I still hope that someday someone will learn the truth and honor him. It is him who should be remembered not me. So I wait here, I refuse to enter pass the River Styx without him and will stay here forever it that is what it takes.”  
Many are crying now. Some are soulmates who lost one another and reunited but had no money, others are people who, like me, are waiting for their other halves, other’s are children that died far too young and are taking my tale as a new sad fairy-tale. Here we all stay waiting wondering if we'll ever make it to the other side of the river. But I will wait as long as is needed to be reunited with Patroclus, my love, my heart, my soulmate.

**Author's Note:**

> I saw some posts of soulmate AUs on Tumblr and then the story just seemed to write itself. I apologize for any mistakes I made or any places it seems odd. I edited it a few times but their is only so much the author sees. I hope it was not confusing it made sense to me but I don't have anyone to help me check.


End file.
